“How do you know they won't come, Daddy? Oh, Daddy, Henry really is my only brother an' I love 'im. You don't know how good he is to me sometimes. He mends my things, and makes toys for me with his knife, and tells me stories about sailors and soldiers and Indians.” Hoag turned on his side and laid a caressing hand on the boy's brow. “Now, now,” he said, soothingly, “let's both go to sleep.” “All right, Daddy.” Jack leaned over his father's face and kissed him. “Good night.” “Good night.” Hoag rolled over to the front side of the bed, straightened himself out and closed his eyes. CHAPTER III |ON finding himself alone in his room, Paul began to realize the full import of the startling information Hoag had imparted to him. He stood before an open window, and with the sense of being afloat on a sea of actual ecstasy he gazed into the mystic moonlight. Northward lay the village, and to the left towered the mountains for which he had hungered all the years of his absence. How restful, God-blessed seemed the familiar meadows and fields in their drowsy verdure! He took deep draughts of the mellow air, his broad chest expanding, his arms extended wide, as if to clasp the whole in a worshiping embrace. “Thank God,” he cried, fervently, “I am not a murderer! My prayers are answered. The Lord is showing me the way--and _such_ a way--such a glorious, blessed way!” And to-morrow--his thoughts raced madly onward--to-morrow the dawn would break. The land he loved, the hills and vales he adored, would be flooded with the blaze of his first day of actual life. Ethel would be there--little Ethel, who, of course, was now a young woman--there, actually there, in that very house! Would she remember him--the ragged boy whom she had so unselfishly befriended? What must she think of him--if she thought of him at all--for acting as he had? Oh yes, that was it--if she thought of him at all! He had treasured her every word. Her face and voice, in all their virginal sympathy, had been constantly with him during the terrible years through which he had struggled. The dawn was breaking. Paul lay sleeping; his bearded face held a frown of pain; his lips were drawn downward and twisted awry. He was dreaming. He saw himself seated at his desk in the editorial room of the paper on which he had worked in the West. He seemed to be trying to write an article, but the sheets of paper before him kept fluttering to the floor and disappearing from sight. There was a rap on the door, the latch was turned, and an officer in uniform entered and stood beside him. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but you'll have to come with me. You are wanted back in Georgia. We've been looking for you for years, but we've landed you at last.” Paul seemed to see and hear the jingle of a pair of steel handcuffs. A dead weight bore down on his brain as the metal clasped his wrists. Dense darkness enveloped him, and he felt himself being jerked along at a mad pace.